1. Field
Example embodiments of the following disclosure relate to a robot arm, including a force sensing apparatus, and more particularly, to a robot arm including a force sensing apparatus capable of accurately sensing a force in an axial direction of the robot arm, without being affected by a motion of the robot arm.
2. Description of the Related Art
Robots for diverse uses have been developed and commercialized in line with the advances in robot technology. For example, a remote-controlled surgery robot connected to a surgical part of a patient assists a surgeon in easily conducting minute surgical operations by viewing the surgical part remotely on an endoscope screen. By using the surgery robot, handshake that is caused as the surgeon moves his/her hand may be compensated for, and a remote surgical arm may scale-down and reproduce the motion of the surgeon's hand, and thus, precise operations may be conducted.
However, currently commercialized surgery robots provide only image information about a surgical part via an endoscope, and touch information which can be obtained in typical surgical operations is not provided. That is, compared to a surgical operation actually performed by using the hands, it is difficult for a surgeon to accurately figure out the amount of force applied to a surgical part by a surgical instrument attached to a surgery robot arm. Thus, if information about intensity of a contact of the surgical instrument, attached to the surgery robot arm, to the surgical part is provided to the surgeon, the information about the contact together with the image information may be helpful for minute operations needed for cutting, cauterization, suture, and the like, of the surgical part. To this end, it is important to accurately measure forces acting between the surgical instrument attached to the surgery robot arm and the surgical part.
Accordingly, installment of a delicate force sensing apparatus at an operational end of a surgery robot has been researched. However, currently suggested force sensing apparatuses are not capable of accurately measuring forces in each direction or it is difficult to mount force sensing apparatuses on an arm portion of a surgery robot in a limited space. Additionally, such force sensing apparatuses may malfunction in an environment where a strong electromagnetic field exists. In particular, it is difficult to sense a force acting in an axial direction of a robot arm. In addition, while grippers installed at the operational end of the surgery robot or the like are operating, a reaction force may be generated in the axial direction of the robot arm, which makes it even more difficult to sense a force in the axial direction.